i checked out dells, gateways, and the vaios, and honestly just stumbled into the toshiba line. and it won me over bigtime - amazing specs for the bucks. i picked mine up for around 2k after the $100 rebate. not bad. the only downside is the battery life . . .only 1 hour 50 minutes. for my needs it wasn't an issue, but it is something to consider

i'm running live, logic, reason, absynth, reaktor, etc . . . the thing hasn't crashed once, and it looks great. i've even caught a few of my TiBook friends looking surprised when they see it for the first time. :)

I just picked up a new Inspiron 8200 for live performance because I have always had good experience with Dell, though I will say my last few tech support calls have been less than thrilling (the wait times are way up over a couple years ago). I also have found it easier to get the freebie and promotional "crapware" off a Dell than most other manufacturer's laptops (e.g. Fujitsu) because there's less of it. It has not have any noise problem yet with my EMI 2|6, although I have a sporadic problem with my Inspiron 7500 and my EMI 2|6, which at my best guess is a design problem with the EMI 2|6.

I did not even consider a VIAO because I knw three people who all bought them in late 2001/early 2002 and every one of them had fits with them in the first few weeks. Their choices were primarly motivated by the cool factor of certain consumer oriented features (like the video editing stuff), and only one was a particularly savvy computer user. He's the one that returned his.

Most of the issues they had were of the "nice free software, why does it crash my system" type, and the rather flimsy (though pretty) nature of the case and components.

I've recently read one computer reviewer who specifically took Sony to task for just those same issues say he believes they learned their lesson and gotten much more solid in their shipping setups.

i saw an s702 at j and r music world, which is less than cdw's 607, and has a more impressive spec. i had to make the choice too, and went for the 501, as the spec was strong enough, and figured i could put the saved cash towards a good backpack, a lock, and maybe even some software . . . . :-)

I think most PC laptops use the mini 4 pin firewire ports. My big external firewire drive requires external power so it doesnt matter. But my firefly is powered by firewire so I would have to use my maxtor PCMCIA firewire card which has 2 full size ports on it to get it working. So yeah it kinda does suck but going the PCMCIA route aint bad since they're not that expensive.

Sager sells incredible, powerful laptops and has a great customer service record. If you do decide to buy, I suggest PC Torque be your eTailer of choice for Sager equipment... Adam at PCTorque is brilliant...

yeah, format, i am still 100% jazzed with the toshiba, maybe even moreso now, as i am currently in a totally mobile situation -- my job has me stationed in boston thru jan, but i live in nyc and i've been taking the bullet train back and forth. it's 3.5 hours each way, and they've got electrical outlets on the train . . . so everyone's got their laptops up and cranking. it's allowed me to turn a fairly dull trip into an ultra-productive one . . . and of course i've been jamming in the hotel room as well! just the toshiba, the emi 2|6, and my headphones . . . it's been flawless so far. funny thing is, everybody on the train thinks the emi is some kind of wifi device! ha! now that would be nice!

sorry if that was a bit of a roundabout answer, but truly, i'm thankful every day that i picked up that machine . . .

memetic, thanx for the reply - I will give those Toshibas a serious try.

stubby, ---> I'd already decided to get the Powerbook and went to the shop to pick it up. He was going to sell me the MOtu 828 as well - everything went fine until I proposed that we copy a Live session I'd done on my PC to see if they were compatible. So I started LIve up with my song, and got the same terrible dropouts and 116% CPU meter readings as on my old 600 Mhz PIII - well, not the same but only very, very slightly better - This made me think again, and I left without purchasing the Powerbook.
I was aware of the performance shortcomings in Live, but this was just inacceptable for a machine that would have set me back some 3,000 €.
Fortunately, my dealer has contacted Ableton, who are now working on the problem with my Live file, and he also tried the same song without internal plug-ins - he replaced them all with TC ones, which made performance drop significantly. As V2 is supposedly not optimised for the G4 chip, I have not much hope that things will get better. If Ableton do find out that there's a problem with the file or offer some other kind of solution, I will gladly purchase the PB because it ran wonderfully otherwise.
I think that a laptop bought at this point in time should have no problem playing 13 files simultaneously with one compressor on each track, 2 autofilters and one send reverb on "First Class".
What do you guys think? Would you agree?